Generative AI (GenAI) can help faculty and staff automate routine tasks, summarize documents, analyze datasets, and brainstorm new ideas. The university provides several secure tools designed to protect your data while enhancing productivity.
Core AI Resources
- U-M GPT: Our most advanced and flexible service offering, providing API gateway access to those who require full control over their AI environments and models. Note that there are costs associated with this service and eligibility for U-M GPT Toolkit differs from other ITS AI Services.
- U-M Maizey: A tool that enables U-M faculty, staff, and students to use custom datasets to enhance their GenAI experience, helping them extract insights, discover patterns, and gain deeper knowledge from the data.
- Go Blue App: A mobile campus companion that offers voice-based search and image analysis to help with everyday campus life and university services.
- Adobe Firefly: Available through the Adobe Creative Cloud, this tool is specifically for creating and editing high-quality images and visual content.
- AI and Sustainability: For guidance on using AI responsibly with environmental impact in mind, staff can visit U-M’s AI and Sustainability resource page.
- ITS AI Services Support: For help with U-M AI tools, questions, or troubleshooting, staff can visit the U-M AI Support page and register for ITS office hours.
- ITS AI Workflow Services: AI Workflows (powered by n8n) is a low-code platform that helps you automate complex tasks by connecting your data, systems, and AI into a single, end-to-end process.
- Sensitive Data Guide to ITS Services: This guide is designed to help you make informed security and compliance decisions about which IT services to use when collecting, processing, storing, or sharing university data. This guide is not intended to be a complete or comprehensive catalog of all IT services available at U-M.
Tips for Effective Prompting
To get the best results, remember the three core elements of a successful prompt:
- Author: Define the persona or level of expertise the AI should assume.
- Audience: Specify who the content is for to help the AI tool set the right tone and jargon level.
- Purpose: Clearly state your goal (e.g., “Summarize this report into three bullet points”).
Tip: Be specific, provide examples, and use iterative prompting. You don’t have to get it perfect in the first try; you can refine the conversation as you go.
Responsible & Ethical Use
- Protect Sensitive Data: Always use university-approved tools like U-M GPT. Your data in these tools is private and is not used to train the AI models.
- Fact-Check Everything: AI can “hallucinate” or provide inaccurate information. Always review AI-generated emails, reports, and documents for accuracy.
- Mitigate Bias: AI can reflect societal biases from its training data. Use inclusive language in your prompts and review outputs to ensure they do not reinforce stereotypes.
- Be Transparent: If you use AI to create or modify images or significant text, cite the tool used (e.g., “Image generated by DALL-E 3”).